Saturday 10 November 2012

Mozart: Requiem - John Adams: Wound Dresser

Mozart's manuscript
I have always been rather wary of large-scale symphonic performances of Mozart's Requiem. I first learned the work when I performed it in a chamber orchestra at university and have long preferred it on a smaller scale. (Though hearing Giulini conducting it on a huge scale at the Edinburgh Festival was the exception). For me, it comes down to balance. So, the performance from Polphyony and the City of London Sinfonia on Wednesday 14 November at St John's Smith Square is set to be a fine performance in this style.

They are conducted by Stephen Layton and have assembled a strong cast. The soloists are Elizabeth Watts, Clare Wilkinson, Jeremy Ovenden and Roderick Williams, a very fine group. But almost even more tempting is the fact that the Requiem is being paired with a performance of John Adams's profoundly elegiac The Wound Dresser, with Roderick Williams as the baritone soloist. This setting of Walt Whitman's poem was, amazingly, written in 1989.

Further information from the St. Johns Smith Square website.

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